Interiors: a kitsch-cute Somerset cottage

Vintage patchwork quilts, 1950s fabrics, china animals and even plaster Bambi
lamps… they have all found a home in this charming 'ironic cute’ Somerset
cottage.

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The kitchen with its new aga and stone floor. the 1940s chair upholstered with needlepoint was an ebay find
Photo: JAN BALDWIN

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The kitchen table is laid for a birthday teaPhoto: JAN BALDWIN

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Peter himself designed the sitting-room curtain fabric
Photo: JAN BALDWIN

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In the 'girls' bedroom' the iron-framed bed is piled with antique quilts and vintage cushionsPhoto: JAN BALDWIN

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A vintage mirror in the girls' bedroomPhoto: JAN BALDWIN

By Ros Byam Shaw
. Photographs by Jan Baldwin

7:00AM BST 25 Sep 2009

Peter Westcott’s Somerset cottage is instantly loveable. Just the sight of its dear little windows, its porch draped with wisteria, its front garden packed with flowers, is enough to make your mouth pucker into the sort of 'ohhh’ more often reserved for puppies and kittens.

'I had been thinking about buying a house in the country for years,’ says Peter, 'but kept waiting for “something better”. My mum sent me the brochure for this cottage. When I came to see it, before I had even reached the front door two turtle doves landed at my feet. Then, when we were looking round the garden, we saw a kingfisher. I thought, “Oh my God, it’s another sign,” and I knew I had to buy it.’

That was six years ago and Peter’s enthusiasm for the place has barely wavered since. His working life as head of Westcott Design Ltd, which produces print and knitwear designs for everyone from Primark to Dolce & Gabbana, is London-based and 'frenetic’. But, despite his busy schedule, he manages to escape frequently to the cottage with his partner, Andrew Merron. Having been brought up on nearby Exmoor and attended art school in Taunton, he still has local friends. 'It feels like coming home when we turn into the drive,’ he says, 'and I’ve tried to give the interior a quiet, old-fashioned, nostalgic atmosphere, so that being here also feels a bit like going back in time.’

No one knows exactly how old the cottage is, but its thick walls and small windows place it as 18th century, if not earlier. Most of the changes that Peter made to the interior were simply to remove layers of modernity. Ceilings were stripped back to reveal beams, which he has painted white. Upstairs he took up the carpets to reveal the original floorboards, which he also painted white. Downstairs he put in new stone flooring and added matchboard panelling in the kitchen. The modern kitchen units were taken out and replaced with plain painted cupboards, wooden worktops and a Belfast sink.

As for furnishings, Peter didn’t want anything to look new. 'Our house in London is quite slick and sophisticated,’ he says, 'but I wanted this place to be a real contrast.’ He has been buying and selling vintage fabrics for some years. 'They are a great source of inspiration for my work,’ he explains, 'but the cottage gave me another reason for keeping them, and a way of using them.’ All the curtains in the house are vintage, except for the pair in the living-room in a fabric he designed when working for Designers Guild in the mid-1980s. Also made from vintage fabrics are the cushions, which are mounded on the living-room sofa and neatly propped on the beds. There are old rag rugs on the floors, crocheted blankets over the backs of chairs and antique patchwork quilts on the beds. The furniture is in the same vein, dating from the 1930s to the 1950s, much of it bought in markets and junk shops.

But it is the ornaments and pictures that give the cottage its distinctive look. There is a whole menagerie of kitsch animals, from the china swans that sail across the top of a bedroom chest of drawers to the pair of plaster Bambi lamps that flanks the sofa. 'I call it “ironic cute”,’ Peter says with a smile.

The upstairs bedroom at the back of the house in particular teems with wildlife – home to the swans, china birds, a mirror shaped like a butterfly and a doorstop in the shape of a duck. 'This is what we call the girls’ bedroom,’ says Peter. 'When it was finished I had my two nieces to stay. They were about five and seven, and

I tucked them into the bed and started reading them a Beatrix Potter story.

I imagined they would think it complete heaven. But I had only read a few pages when one of them said something along the lines of, “Give it a break.” At which point I realised that their idea of a perfect childhood was not quite the same as my own.’

As if to complete the storybook charm, it turns out that there is a ghost, and a benign and protective one at that. 'I had a visit from a very dodgy second-hand Aga salesman when we first moved in. I didn’t like the look of him at all and was convinced he was casing the joint. He was dawdling in the living-room when he suddenly panicked, said he had seen “a huge face” and scarpered.’

Peter made his peace with the ghost early on. 'I told her that she could have the place to herself all week, but that I was coming at weekends whether she liked it or not. And I think she does like it now.’